‘Great healthcare for you’ reads the backdrop as President Trump delivers remarks on Medicare at a performing-arts center in The Villages, Fla.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday accused Democrats of an all-out attempt to “totally obliterate Medicare” and portrayed himself as the program’s defender as he took steps to expand Medicare’s private insurance option.
But no Democrat is proposing to take coverage or benefits away, a fact that undercuts Trump’s rhetoric, and Trump did not dwell on his own budget proposals for cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers.
Trump spoke at The Villages, a community for adults in Central Florida, as he defended himself against House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. That part of the state overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016.
Health care has emerged as a central issue for Democrats competing for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination. Much of the debate has centered on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for All” plan, which would cover everyone under a government-run plan and eliminate most private insurance.
“Medicare is under threat like never before,” Trump said. “Almost every major Democrat in Washington has backed a massive government health care takeover that would totally obliterate Medicare.”
Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to pursue changes to Medicare, which covers about 60 million seniors and disabled people. Much of what he has said he wants to do is geared toward enhancing Medicare Advantage, the private insurance option picked by about one-third of seniors.
Medicare Advantage plans offer savings on premiums and an annual limit on out-of-pocket costs. These plans provide one-stop shopping, eliminating the need for separate supplemental insurance. Offered by major insurers, the plans also cover prescription drugs in most cases.
But there are trade-offs. People joining a Medicare Advantage plan generally must accept limits on their choice of hospitals and doctors as well as prior insurer approval for certain procedures. If they change their minds and decide to return to traditional Medicare, they’re not always guaranteed supplemental “Medigap” coverage, which is also private.
The president’s order is basically a to-do list for the Department of Health and Human Services that will require months of follow-up. Among the other priorities are an expansion of telemedicine and changes to avoid overpaying for procedures just because they get done in a hospital instead of a doctor’s office.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Trump’s order directs his department to examine whether its current policies and practices put traditional Medicare ahead of the private Medicare Advantage option. Some advocates for older people say that it’s the other way around and that the administration is trying to put private plans ahead.
The executive order does not involve a major overhaul of Medicare, which would require congressional approval.
So far the debate about Medicare for All has mainly been about its projected costs to the government, estimated at $30 trillion to $40 trillion over 10 years.
The Sanders plan would eliminate most private health insurance, including the Medicare Advantage option. Sanders, who unexpectedly underwent a heart procedure this week, says Medicare for All would nonetheless offer seniors broader benefits and lower costs.
Sanders’ style of single-payer health care has long been popular among liberals. But recent polling has shown that a majority of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic prefer expanding coverage by building on the Affordable Care Act, or the Obama-era health law. Trump is asking federal courts to overturn that law as unconstitutional, after a Republican-controlled Congress failed to repeal it his first year in office.
As a presidential candidate, Trump promised not to cut Medicare. As president, he has avoided calling for privatization of the program, raising the eligibility age beyond 65 or rolling back benefits.
But Trump’s latest budget proposed steep cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals and other service providers, prompting protests from the industry and accusations by Democrats that he was going back on his promises to seniors. The Medicare cuts went nowhere in Congress.
What the hell is going on? Hawaii just got an incoming nuclear missile threat and because of our new leader, people believed it. We have lost our way as a country. The world thinks we’re a joke and there’s a joke in the most powerful position in the world. I would give my yakuza pinkie right now for Mitt Romney. All that being said the new show is a killer balance between right and left. Thoughtful conservatives and my Grandma are starting to realize that we made a mistake. AMERIGEDDON is bringing the country together one drunk audience at a time. It’s for all of us because it takes one side, The side of America. Don’t worry about anything people! It’ll be okay, we will survive, or live in a post apocalyptic gasoline fueled thrill ride where tribes fight each other over who should lead…just like now, except we’ll all have Mohawks.
Administration finalizes repeal of 2015 water rule Trump called ‘destructive and horrible’
Fran Miron, shown Sept. 5 on his farm in Hugo, Minn., is among the many farmers who objected to a 2015 expansion of waterway regulation by the Obama administration. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
For years, the fight over how much power the federal government should have to regulate the wetlands and tributaries that feed into the nation’s largest rivers has played out across the country.
In the halls of Washington and on sprawling farms and ranches, in courtrooms and corporate boardrooms, a legal tug of war has unfolded over a 2015 rule that gave the Environmental Protection Agency much broader authority over the nation’s waterways. Critics say the Obama-era rule gave the federal government far too much power; supporters countered it would prevent the loss of vast swaths of wetlands. Court rulings have temporarily blocked the regulation in 28 states, while keeping it in effect in 22 others.
On Thursday, the Trump administration plans to scrap the Obama-era definition of what qualifies as “waters of the United States
” under the Clean Water Act, returning the country to standards put in place in 1986.
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“What we have today is a patchwork across the country,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview. “We need to have a uniform regulatory approach.”
between the 1780s and 1980s, most of it to expand farmland. That rate began to slow in the 1980s, and after George H.W. Bush took office he pledged to stem the tide of wetlands loss.
“The administration wants to go back to an era where we are destroying wetlands heedlessly,” Robert Irvin, president of the American Rivers organization, said of President Trump’s latest deregulatory effort.
The 2015 rule gave the federal government authority to oversee a wide array of lakes, streams, wetlands, storm-water controls and ditches feeding into larger waterways that are clearly protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act.
Swimmers, fishermen and picnickers at Sandy Point State Park in Annapolis in 2016. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Denise Stranko, federal legislative and policy manager for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, noted that all but one of the six states in the bay’s watershed, along with the District of Columbia, operate under the Obama-era standard. She added that once the administration finalizes its substitute proposal, tens of thousands of acres that connect underground or through ditches to nearby waterways will lose protection.
Targeting the Obama-era regulation ranked among Trump’s top priorities when he took office. In February 2017, he issued an executive order directing the EPA to review the regulation in an effort to pave the way for what Trump called “the elimination of this very destructive and horrible rule.”
The Clean Water Act makes it unlawful to pollute a “water of the United States” without a permit, but what constitutes such water has been the subject of lengthy litigation.
In a 2006 decision, Rapanos v. United States, the Supreme Court’s four most conservative justices at the time offered a constrained view that only “navigable waters” met this test. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who refused to join the conservatives or the liberals on the court, said that the government could intervene when there was a “significant nexus” between large water bodies and smaller ones.
Trump’s executive order said federal officials should rely on the opinion of the then-Justice Antonin Scalia, who argued that the law should apply to wetlands connected to “relatively permanent” bodies of water as well as navigable waters.
Wheeler is slated to announce the final repeal of the 2015 rule at the National Association of Manufacturers, whose members had pushed to scale it back. “America is now one step closer to smart and balanced regulation that protects our nation’s precious water resources,” the group’s president, Jay Timmons, said in a statement.
Thursday’s move is part of a broader effort by the administration to roll back regulations affecting the private sector before the end of Trump’s first term. Among the dozens already reversed are rules on everything from curbing methane emissions from drilling operations to holding oil and gas companies responsible for killing birds that get ensnared in their rigs’ waste pits.
Several of the administration’s early wins came through the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to nullify any rule within 60 days of enactment. The Republican-controlled Congress in 2017 was able to overturn several of President Barack Obama’s last environmental acts that way, sending the bills to Trump for his signature.
Reversing older regulations, such as the Clean Water Rule, has proved more difficult. Wheeler said it was taking longer than first anticipated to finalize the administration’s new standards because staffers were conducting economic and scientific research to bolster the case for shrinking the federal government’s authority over wetlands and streams.
“I’m not in a rush to meet artificial deadlines,” he said. “I want to make sure that our regulations are grounded, that they have all the supporting information they need to be upheld by the courts.”
“Clearly the administration is intent on rolling back as many protections as it can before January of 2021,” he said. “Like any rushed efforts, they are likely to make mistakes that will be challenged and overturned in court.”
On a recent evening in Hugo, Minn., Fran Miron looked out over the 800-acre farm that his family has maintained for four generations and explained why he welcomes the Trump administration’s latest rollback. He said the Obama rule led to widespread confusion, as well as worries about increasing costs and red tape.
“In my opinion, and I think it’s shared by many, this was really just a power grab,” said Miron, 65, whose family milks 120 cows and grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa.
A former mayor of Hugo, Miron said he believes that the federal government doesn’t always know what’s best for a particular place.
“The best decisions are made locally because the local people understand the nature of the issues,” he said. “They understand the nuances of the land and our water.”
Miron, shown Sept. 5 on his farm, said he believes a 2015 rule that gave the EPA much broader authority over the nation’s waterways “was really just a power grab.” (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
Since Mayor Val Zudans is a “lifetime NRA member” he took particular umbrage to the supervisors designating it a “domestic terrorist organization.” (Courtesy photo)
A letter to the Florida mayor who trashed our fine city of San Francisco
The mayor of tiny Vero Beach, Florida wrote a letter, on official letterhead, lambasting San Francisco and the Board of Supervisors.
I’m in a Facebook group called San Francisco Current Events. It’s exactly what it sounds like; people share all kinds of newsworthy things going on in SF and the Bay Area. The other day I checked it out and found something extra special: the mayor of tiny Vero Beach, Florida wrote a letter, on official letterhead, lambasting San Francisco and the Board of Supervisors.
Since Mayor Val Zudans is a “lifetime NRA member, concealed carry permit holder” he took particular umbrage to the supervisors designating the NRA a “domestic terrorist organization” — and taking inspiration right out Trump’s playbook — used his official position to call San Francisco a “sanctuary for criminals, addicts, and homeless encampments” and that “Your most recent action stinks like the steaming excrement on your streets.”*
I’d like to take a moment to respond to Mayor Zudans’ letter:
Dear Mayor Zudans –
Your concern for the well being of San Francisco has been duly noted. After consulting with the citizenry of our fair city, it’s been universally agreed upon that nobody asked for your damn opinion. While I’m sure that being mayor of a town of 17,000 people has its challenges, San Francisco is a city of nearly a million people and has a $12 billion budget. Heeding your advice on how a city should be run would be like the San Francisco Giants taking advice from a t-ball coach.
Maybe I should use a more familiar analogy for you since Vero Beach doesn’t have a professional sports team…or even a real airport for that matter. You’re an ophthalmologist right? Your attempt to tell San Francisco how to run itself is like a drunken teenager watching a YouTube video on eye examinations trying to advise you on your practice. What I’m getting at here is: stay in your lane, Val. Stick to performing Lasik surgery and trying to upsell transition lenses.
In your absurd, misguided, and frankly uninspiring letter, you mention that owning a gun is one of our “God-given Constitutional liberties” and to be honest Val, that just made me smile. I’m not exactly a Biblical scholar, but I’m 100 percent certain there is no mention of guns anywhere in the New or Old Testament. Besides the fact that guns weren’t invented when any part of the Bible was written, could you imagine hippy-ass Jesus saying “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me…and obviously trust in my Beretta”?
On top of that, God didn’t give us this land, we disgustingly took it from Native Americans by force and through genocide…which is something I figured you might know about considering your city is in Indian River County. And God didn’t give us those Constitutional liberties, they were written by a bunch of men who owned slaves and treated women like second class citizens.
Which brings me to my next point, you seem to be obsessed with the idea that, if something is a law, then it must be just. Remember how two sentences ago I mentioned owning slaves and treating women as second class citizens? Well, that used to be legal. Do you think prohibition was just and fair? That was, stupidly, a constitutional amendment. And didn’t Jesus get killed for breaking the law? Your argument is weaker than a Mai Tais at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort.
Most importantly though, the NRA is a domestic terrorist organization. In your insipid letter you quoted Webster’s Dictionary’s definition of the word terrorism as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion,” which I thank you for. There is no better way to describe what the NRA does in our country. Through lies and propaganda is convinces gullible marks like you that owning a firearm will protect you from our “tyrannical government” and save you from bad guys who want to shoot you first.
I covered this in my column a few weeks ago Val, but since you’re just now becoming an avid reader of my column, I’ll break it down for you real quick. If the government wants you, your guns won’t protect you. They have bigger guns, and drones, and tanks, and hell, they even bombed an entire neighborhood in Philly in 1985 to kill armed American citizens. As for the idiotic pissing contest that is the idea that “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”: that lie has been disproven through 40- plus years of data and reported by Stanford University and the FBI.
In closing, I’d like to thank you for being the most absurd Florida Man yet. It’s only through the hard work of enterprising nitwits like you that Florida can continue not just looking like America’s Limp Weenie, but acting like it to.
Sincerely,
Stuart Schuffman
*The difference here between the supervisors passing a unanimous resolution and an individual using his office as a pulpit shouldn’t need to be explained.
Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, TV host and poet. Follow him at BrokeAssStuart.com and join his mailing list at http://bit.ly/BrokeAssList. He is a guest columnist and his point of view is not necessarily that of The Examiner.
Hurricane Dorian may have long since left the Bahamas, but the islands have only begun to grapple with the grim aftermath.
Less than a week since the Category 5 storm hit, 45 people have been confirmed dead — and that number is expected to rise drastically, officials say. Hundreds are still missing, nearly 70,000 have been left homeless by the disaster and hundreds more are desperately looking for a way out.
In a social media video taken aboard a ferry boat leaving the Bahamas, posted on Twitter by CNN affiliate WSVN reporter Brian Entin, an unidentified person announces via a loudspeaker that anyone traveling to the Unites States without a visa must disembark.
Entin told CNN he was on a Balearia ferry from Freeport to Fort Lauderdale when the announcement was made Sunday. His video shows families with children disembarking the vessel. One woman told Entin that as many as 130 people left the ferry after the announcement.
“CBP was notified of a vessel preparing to embark an unknown number of passengers in Freeport and requested that the operator of the vessel coordinate with U.S. and Bahamian government officials in Nassau before departing The Bahamas,” CBP said in a statement Sunday.
“Everyone who arrives to the United States from another country must present themselves to a CBP officer for inspection at an official CBP Port of Entry. All person must possess valid identity and travel documents,” the agency said. “CBP has a Preclearance operation in Nassau. CBP is committed to carrying out our duties with professionalism and efficiency — facilitating lawful international travel and trade.”
On its website, CBP says visas are not required for Bahamian residents flying into the US from the Bahamas if they also meet other criteria, including possessing a valid passport or travel documents, having no criminal record and carrying a police certificate issued within the past six months.
“CBP relies on the transportation companies in both the air and sea environments to be engaged in ensuring the safety and well-being of any individuals that have been devastated by this tragedy and that requires transparent communication and planning for adequate resources to receive any arrivals,” CBP said in its Sunday statement.
It was not immediately clear what the required documents are for Bahamians traveling by boat.
“This is the height of cruelty — denying help to those who need it most,” Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said on Twitter Sunday night. “This administration has said the words on the Statue of Liberty should be rewritten, and in their actions, they are already changing who we are as a country.”
Bahamas destruction like ‘nuclear bombs were dropped,’ USAID says
By Friday, the Coast Guard had rescued more than 230 people off the islands.
Those who lived through the storm bring with them horrific tales of survival: breaking through rooftops or swimming onto boats to try and ride out the violent waters. Some reported they had family members still missing and others recalled watching friends and neighbors drown in the storm surge.
USAID Administrator Mark Green told reporters on Sunday his agency is leading humanitarian relief efforts of the US government in the Bahamas by providing “lifesaving and life-sustaining assistance: food, water, sanitation, emergency shelter, and medical care needed to facilitate the Bahamian government’s response.”
On Saturday, USAID announced $1 million in additional humanitarian assistance to help people affected in the Bahamas. That brings the agency’s total funding to more than $2.8 million.
Green said he toured Abaco and other parts of the Bahamas after the hurricane and said some areas looked “almost as though nuclear bombs were dropped on them.”
Search and rescue operations continue
Local authorities believe there are people buried under the rubble, but they have no way of knowing how many or when they will be able to get to them.
Search and rescue personnel who arrived with cadaver dogs on the Abaco Islands brought body bags and coolers to store human remains, said Joy Jibrilu, director general of the country’s tourism and aviation ministry.
Marsh Harbour, the biggest town in the Abacos, was one of the hardest hit. A truck delivered at least two bodies to a makeshift mortuary Saturday. The morticians told CNN the difficulty in reaching the dead was slowing their work. Dive teams were needed to recover many submerged bodies, they said.
Authorities have said the current death toll may rise as search and rescue operations begin and they start sifting through the wreckage. In the hardest hit areas of Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands, entire neighborhoods had been cleared out, trees and poles were down and boats were scattered.
The public should prepare for “unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering,” Health Minister Duane Sands told Guardian Radio 96.9 FM.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday declaring the National Rifle Association a “domestic terrorist organization” and urging the city to examine its financial relationships with companies that do business with the group.
The sharply worded declaration noted recent acts of gun violence, including the July shooting that killed three people, all younger than 26, at a food festival in Gilroy, Calif., south of San Francisco.
“The National Rifle Association musters its considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence,” it read. “The National Rifle Association spreads propaganda that misinforms and aims to deceive the public about the dangers of gun violence, and … the leadership of National Rifle Association promotes extremist positions, in defiance of the views of a majority of its membership and the public, and undermine the general welfare.”
The resolution, adopted unanimously by the board’s 11 supervisors, notes many of the statistics that make the United States stand out in terms of gun violence, stating that the country’s gun homicide rate is “25 times higher than any other high-income country in the world” and that 36,000 people in the United States die in gun-related incidents every year, an average of 100 per day.
It also said the city would assess its financial and contractual relationships with vendors that do business with the NRA.
“The City and County of San Francisco should take every reasonable step to limit those entities who do business with the City and County of San Francisco from doing business with this domestic terrorist organization,” it noted.
Supervisor Catherine Stefani told reporters that she had decided to write the declaration after the shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. A gunman there killed a 6-year-old, a 13-year-old and a 25-year-old before taking his own life. The mass shooting was followed within days by massacres in El Paso, where a gunman killed 22 people, and Dayton, Ohio, where a man killed nine people.
“The NRA conspires to limit gun violence research, restrict gun violence data sharing and most importantly aggressively tries to block every piece of sensible gun violence prevention legislation proposed on any level, local state or federal,” Stefani said, according to KQED. “When they use phrases like, ‘I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands’ on bumper stickers, they are saying reasoned debate about public safety should be met with violence.”
Stefani told The Washington Post that she believed the group had earned the designation as a “terrorist organization.”
“They should reasonably know by now that they are fueling the hate fire in this country,” she said. “People are dying, and they continue to stand in the way of reform.”
Amy Hunter, a spokeswoman for the NRA, called the resolution a “reckless assault on a law-abiding organization, its members and the freedoms they all stand for.”
“This is just another worthless and disgusting ‘sound bite remedy’ to the violence epidemic gripping our nation,” she said. “We remain undeterred — guided by our values and belief in those who want to find real solutions to gun violence.”
The NRA has been at the center of political tensions in recent years as horrific acts of gun violence continue to regularly punctuate the political conversation. New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, is investigating the group’s finances over its tax-exempt status as a nonprofit group.
Lawrence B. Glickman, professor of history at Cornell University, said it was unusual for governments to orchestrate boycotts of private entities.
“Municipalities in the era of the American Revolution called for ostracism or boycotting of individuals who violated the non-importation movement by using, for example, British tea,” he wrote in an email. “Those might be the clearest antecedents for the SF Board of Supervisors decision.”
No matter how long it took, or how much birthday money he would have to save, the 6-year-old South Carolina boy would spend his special day in “The Happiest Place On Earth.”
And, as local TV station WJBF reports, he was pretty close to realizing that dream, planning for a visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom just in time for his seventh birthday this month.
Then he heard the story of the hurricane: how it transformed the Bahamas into the unhappiest place on Earth — and how it continues to churn up the East Coast, leaving a trail of tears in its wake.
How could Bell dream of Disney World when so many others were living a nightmare?
So the boy gathered his savings — and went to the grocery store. Instead of a romp in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Bell bought much-needed food and water for thousands of people forced to leave their homes in advance of the storm.
“The people that are traveling to go to places, I wanted them to have some food to eat, so they can enjoy the ride to the place that they’re going to stay at,” Bell told WJBF.
Indeed, Bell made it hard for anyone to miss his offer. He hauled a couple of homemade signs to Highway 125 in Allendale with the words “Free hot dogs and water” scrawled on them.
And he stood at the side of that highway, calling out to motorists, many of them tired and traumatized after leaving their homes behind. In all, he served more than 100 evacuees.
Jermaine Bell served more than 100 hurricane evacuees. (Photo: Daniel Latimer)
“I am very proud,” his grandmother Aretha Grant told CNN. “We knew Jermaine was very special, but we didn’t know he was special in this way, to be such a giver like this.”
Indeed, at his little stand in Allendale, Bell is giving people something much more precious than hot dogs. He’s offering hope — and along the way, the little boy with the big heart is making his own magic kingdom.
‘Great healthcare for you’ reads the backdrop as President Trump delivers remarks on Medicare at a performing-arts center in The Villages, Fla. WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday accused Democrats of an all-out attempt to “totally obliterate Medicare” and portrayed himself as the program’s defender as he took steps to expand Medicare’s pri […]
What the hell is going on? Hawaii just got an incoming nuclear missile threat and because of our new leader, people believed it. We have lost our way as a country. The world thinks we’re a joke and there’s a joke in the most powerful position in the world. I would give my yakuza pinkie […]
Administration finalizes repeal of 2015 water rule Trump called ‘destructive and horrible’ Fran Miron, shown Sept. 5 on his farm in Hugo, Minn., is among the many farmers who objected to a 2015 expansion of waterway regulation by the Obama administration. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post) By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis September 11, 2019 at 8:59 [… […]
Since Mayor Val Zudans is a “lifetime NRA member” he took particular umbrage to the supervisors designating it a “domestic terrorist organization.” (Courtesy photo) A letter to the Florida mayor who trashed our fine city of San Francisco The mayor of tiny Vero Beach, Florida wrote a letter, on official letterhead, lambasting San Francisco and […]
By Christina Maxouris, CNN Hurricane Dorian may have long since left the Bahamas, but the islands have only begun to grapple with the grim aftermath. Less than a week since the Category 5 storm hit, 45 people have been confirmed dead — and that number is expected to rise drastically, officials say. Hundreds are still missing, nearly 70,000 […]
Since Mayor Val Zudans is a “lifetime NRA member” he took particular umbrage to the supervisors designating it a “domestic terrorist organization.” (Courtesy photo)
